Vox Telecom has today announced the release of Mailtrack, a secure, auditable email product.

“For a long time, data security experts have warned businesses about the necessity of guarding their data centres and backups, as well as mobile devices, but very few companies have focused on protecting moveable data such as email,” says Vox Telecom Head of Marketing, Clayton Timcke. “The reality is that email is extremely vulnerable – and whilst traditional encryption tools protect emails from being accessed by external hackers, research has shown that the majority of data leaks are internal and accidental. MailTrack can assist companies with reducing both external and internal leaks.”

MailTrack is a secure messaging service that can encrypt and track confidential information as it moves in- and outside of the organisations, with features that allow employees to securely send emails and attachments (even large attachments) without ever having to leave their inbox – and it’s also fully accessible from any mobile device.

“Messages can be password protected, and senders can prevent recipients from carrying out certain functions – such as forwarding the email or replying to another party – that may cause data breaches,” Timcke explains. “But what makes this product unique is that it provides businesses with a comprehensive audit trail. They are able to track exactly who received, opened, forwarded or printed sensitive emails, which makes the source of a potential data breach much easier to find.”

This is of particular interest to companies affected by the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act, who may face large penalties should customer information be compromised. “It definitely strengthens any POPI compliance program,” says Timcke. “And as the product can be securely used on mobile devices, it won’t interfere or be compromised by any BYOD (Bring-Your-Own-Device) initiative.

The program is sophisticated enough to allow companies to introduce policy-based data leakage protection, such as automatic encryption based on keywords and phrases or algorithms. Emails that are recalled also disappear from recipients’ mailboxes, even after they are received, to ensure that information sent in error does not stay with the wrong recipient.

Users will also be able to keep track of the progress of the messages they have sent. “Once a message has been sent, the sender can view its status – whether it’s been received, read, its attachments downloaded, etc.”

Timcke believes that one of the key benefits of the product is how simple it is to use. “There is no need to log into a separate site and its user interface makes it extremely easy for guest recipients to use, even if they’ve never encountered it before,” he explains. “Companies can achieve best-of-breed security governance, without significantly changing the way their employees interact via email.”